From what made it's way onto the screen, that is unclear, although possible.

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Originally there wasn't supposed to even be an ECON. It was China. All references to the ECON were originally China. They must not have wanted to piss off the Chinese government or fans, so they changed it at the last minute. (Source: ST:FC commentary track)

And given what the ECON looked like in "Encounter at Farpoint", that's not hard to believe.

With electronic media, by the time of World War III there may not have been a single Barnes and Noble still open.

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Now combine that with EMP from the wide spread use of nuclear weapons.

Consider this possibility, if he were just referring to combat deaths, his figure for the second world war would seem still much too small.

Now for the longest time people thought the death count for Americans in the Korean war was about 54,000, it was only decades later that there was a study and it was found that the actual number was about 37,000.

When Spock said that there were 11 million (combat) deaths in the second world war, maybe he was right?

Originally there wasn't supposed to even be an ECON. It was China. All references to the ECON were originally China. They must not have wanted to piss off the Chinese government or fans, so they changed it at the last minute. (Source: ST:FC commentary track)

And given what the ECON looked like in "Encounter at Farpoint", that's not hard to believe.

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Is there any evidence that what we saw in Farpoint was the Eastern Coalition? The only description of it I recall is that it's a courtroom from the Post Atomic Horror. For all we know the United States broke apart some time after the Bell Riots and the Eastern Coalition was one of the successor states which allied itself against the the Empire of Montana when WWIII broke out.

Is there any evidence that what we saw in Farpoint was the Eastern Coalition? The only description of it I recall is that it's a courtroom from the Post Atomic Horror. For all we know the United States broke apart some time after the Bell Riots and the Eastern Coalition was one of the successor states which allied itself against the the Empire of Montana when WWIII broke out.

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Remember TNG's "The Royale"? It contained a US flag with 52 stars, which placed it anywhere from 2033 to 2079. 2079 was over 20 years AFTER the end of the war. Therefore, the US survived the war intact.

"Eastern" could indeed have meant something like Eastern Europe (although the Farpoint scenes definitely had a lot of Chinese influence), but it's not the eastern *US* - we know that much.

Although I admit the ECON could have been a rogue element operating *within* the US, kind of like those militia wackos. Especially since the logo on the soldiers' helmets (the guys who sniff drugs to keep them under control) is supposed to be Colonel Green's emblem...and Green is apparently American. (Also, in the barely-readable onscreen text from the Defiant logs in IAMD, Green is indeed a militia leader, kind of like the ultimate ultra-radical eco-terrorist.)

Assuming that ECON=China just smacks of Yellow Peril.

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Don't look at me, I'm not the one who wrote the damn thing. As I said, it's on the audio commentary. And nobody 'assumed' anything; there were just some last-minute rewrites done, that's all.

For me, every episode, book, comic, movie exists as a glimpse at an alternate universe. Some of them we have seen before and so they exist in the same universe. Others, show no obvious connection.

Was Khan a product of eugenics or genetic engineering? The answer is yes, depending on which universe we're watching.

Is there a 50 foot clone of Spock on the planet Phylos? Sure, just not in all universes.

Was Kirk a drunken frat boy or a stack of books with legs while at the Academy. Again, the answer is yes to both.

I much prefer the Klingons as depicted in The Final Reflection as opposed to the drunken, amoral biker gang we got in TNG/DS9. Does that mean that Ford's Klingons aren't real Klingons? Nope, they're just as real as any Klingon ever has been, which is to say, not at all. The same goes for Diane Duane's version of the Romulans as compared to the so called "official" version.

If the owners of Star Trek have allowed someone to legally publish or produce something with the name Star Trek on it, it counts. I'd even go so far as to include the fan films in that. If they're not issuing a cease and desist order then it's showing at least a degree of acceptance.

If something contradicts something that has come before I simply shift it to an alternate universe and carry on. Much easier to deal with than trying to wedge everything into one "prime" universe *Which is a dumb concept to begin with. It feels like we're back to imagining the Earth is the center of the universe.)

Exactly who were the combatants was still unspecified in First Contact, a government or group known as "econ" was mentioned, but what part they played in the war is unclear.

Might just have be a eco terrorist group that was harassing Cochrane's effort to create a FTL engine.

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ECON is the EASTern COalition, a moniker most likely referring to the People's Republic of China, Russia, and North Korea (originally, the enemy was supposed to be the People's Republic of China, but as Paramount wanted to sell the movie(s) in China, it was just changed to the less specific ECON.)